Oracle Blog

Virtual Nick Wooler

OpenSSO Express from the trenches

OpenSSO Express has had a fun first week. Sun is announcing that it will now provide comprehensive support and indemnification for OpenSSO. This will be called OpenSSO Express. OpenSSO is the worlds largest open source identity project that provides fully featured single sign-on, federation management and web services security capabilities in a single Java distribution. Customers who purchase Access Manager, the current release of Sun's commercial version of OpenSSO, are now entitled to both support and indemnification for OpenSSO through OpenSSO Express. This move is in response to demand from both Sun Access Manager customers and OpenSSO community members who requested support for OpenSSO rather than waiting for the next commercial product release.

Some of you may have seen my article on SDN where we explained the new model to the developer community. You can read the entire text here. I work with Marina Sum who is a great writer but more importantly a valued manager who kept an eye on the detail of the article. She is a great asset to Sun and you can read the text here.

Also, if you haven't seen Daniel's blog lately you should see his new moniker (The Smoking Monkey). This was derived from the work that was done on the teaser campaign for the Fedlet. However, it was Cote who gave him the name. YOu should read his blog regularly because not only does he cover the identity space but he also has a deep background in System Management and you can see from his blog title he has his priorities in order. If you ever get a chance ask him about whether he has ever seen a man walking a cat on a leash?

This is how Sun defines the different releases in the OpenSSO Community.

Release

Name

Definition

Community

OpenSSO Periodic or Nightly Build

Nightly builds of OpenSSO that customers can download but can only get support from the community via IRC, email or documentation.

Open Source Supported

Sun OpenSSO Express build

Periodic builds (e.g. released every one to two months) that Sun will provide support to customers that have purchased a license and a valid support contract

Commercial

Sun Java System Access Manager

Sun Java System Federation Manager

Commercially supported release of OpenSSO. Sun continues to support backwards compatibility and current release plus the previous two versions for customers. Customer's can get long term support for their production deployments from Sun.

Here is a picture which describes the new release model. Sun will
provide support for the latest OpenSSO Express build and the previous
build (e.g. latest minus one).

This is another move by Sun to align naming and policy across it's OSS projects. It is important because it give's customer choice. Customer's can choose to start projects earlier without having to ask their sales guy for an "early access" version of the software that may or may not be tested by a proprietary software vendor. OpenSSO has 80% of its' code covered by automated test cases. Additionally, customer's that are ready to go to production today can monetize those projects within their business models. This means they can make money today with the knowledge that Sun is there to support their business. This gives customer's choice and opportunity which they did not have last week.

About

Sharing 12 years of technology experience as developer, product and program manager, and marketing director. Identity Management, Security, and Product Management issues occupy my mind during the working day. Water Polo keeps me healthy.